Show has plenty of junkets, but you'll see local experts too

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, February 25, 1997

THE LAST big outdoors show of the season will be dominated by exotic world travel and exhibitors trying to sell expensive trips. But the real attraction for the local public will be Bay Area outdoors sports celebrities with local insights.

The Adventure Sports and Travel Festival, primarily a recreation show, runs Friday through Sunday at the Concourse in San Francisco. This show has always been something of a paradox, locally produced yet with few local attractions, a show with a clean walk-through and some polish, but just not enough size and sizzle to attract a big draw.

There will be about 200 exhibits, and, for the most part, the focus is on world travel - Costa Rica, Indonesia, Thailand, Jamaica, Peru, Ireland, the Yukon - with the booths set up where the public can book trips to these and many other destinations. There is no better show if you have the interest and the money.

But if you don't have one or both, a comparative handful of seminars by the local experts will likely provide more appeal.

The local highlights are seminars on hidden waterfalls, bikes rides and hikes of California by Ann Marie Brown; tips for women travelers, by Marybeth Bond and others; adventure secrets in Northern California by Andrew Rice; and an ongoing kayak, canoe and raft demonstration in an indoor pool.

Also of significant local note is that Paul McHugh, the outdoors writer for the Chronicle, is making a rare public appearance, teaming up with guide Jimmy Katz for a seminar describing their rafting trip down the Tatshenshini River of the Yukon and Alaska.

Most of the other seminars will be travel writers giving slide shows about their trips to various destinations around the world, many of which are linked to booth displays that will be selling the same trips.

Other than world travel, the walk-through exhibits feature a variety of outdoor recreation, including rafting, scuba diving, wilderness hiking, bicycling, rock climbing and sailing. But there will also be an exhibit for Black Mountain Spring Water (?) and another for a real estate company, of all things. What next year? Non-stick frying pans?

A bonus is the large number of rafting companies with booths, 15 in all. That means anyone with interest in a rafting trip will be able to get any question answered and be able to shop to find the right river, trip length, desired degree of independence, and price.

Here is a synopsis of the local-based seminars:

* Hidden waterfalls, bikes rides and hikes of California, by Brown, 6:30 p.m. Friday. The author of "California Waterfalls," this spring's hottest new outdoors book, will provide an insight into the secret places she has discovered on her travels in the Bay Area and beyond.